Electrical utilities gradually replace traditional means for managing and controlling the distribution and consumption of electrical power to industrial and residential customers with intelligent electronic devices (“IEDs”), such as digital electric power and energy meters, Programmable Logic Controllers (“PLCs”), electronically-controlled Remote Terminal Units (“RTUs”), protective relays, fault recorders, and the like. In operation, the IEDs provide a broad selection of monitoring and metering functions and may be accessed via electronic or fiber-optic means of communications.
While it is efficient to use a single model of a respective IED by different groups of customers or in different electrical networks, exposure of the IED to multiple ranges of supply voltages and currents may have a detrimental effect on its operability and/or accuracy of the measurements performed by the IED.
Therefore, further improvements in the intelligent electronic devices would be desirable.